Challenge
NAVIGATING A STRONG CURRENT WITH A WHOLISTIC, METHODICAL APPROACH For more than 70 years, widely recognized Dow Water Solutions provided industry-leading water filtration and specialty separation solutions to homes, municipalities, manufacturers, and industries worldwide. Following the merger of Dow and DuPont, the Dow Water Business was set to transition to the DuPont brand, posing brand and audience recognition challenges.
Solution
Our initial assessment showed that this would be much more than a content migration and brand integration exercise. Making the newly dubbed and unknown DuPont Water Solutions relevant to current and prospective customers would require a content overhaul, UX enhancement, visual metamorphosis, and brand realization that would convey the business’s continued commitment to customers and establish DuPont as a leading voice in global conversations about water use. To further complicate things, DuPont was in the process of developing a new brand identity and positioning. DOWN AND DIRTY RESEARCH Time constraints and limited access to potential customers meant a scrappy approach to research: an internal SME workshop to validate personas and discover pain points and hopes that took advantage of local meetings of global marketing leaders; and VOC interviews with targeted current customers. Along with thorough competitive and content audits, we formulated our strategy, focusing on three key areas. ESTABLISHING A SMOOTH, NATURAL FLOW Our research suggested—and user testing subsequently validated—a simplified information architecture, with navigation labels aligned with buyer, rather than business, use, and focused yet intuitive ways for users to enter the site. This approach dramatically improved the previous site’s fractured structure, which had been comprised of multiple, loosely connected URLs. The new experience also offers contextual cross-linking, helping website visitors connect their industries, technology needs, and product solutions, while curated related resources advance buyer journeys to deeper content, like a newly designed periodic table tool. SURGING TOWARD RELEVANCE Ensuring that users would recognize DuPont’s relevance to their industries and complex challenges, we refined product content—and bolstered means to accessing products—while significantly enhancing industry- and technology-related content. New “Why DuPont?” content demonstrates (not just announces) DuPont’s global leadership and thought leadership, while new messaging and expanded content clearly differentiates DuPont from competitors. Finally, a beautiful, refined design not only brings the water solutions business squarely within the DuPont brand, but establishes the business as a stand-out brand leader. FLOATING CONTACT OPPORTUNITIES TO THE TOP During our research stage, even internal subject matter experts had difficulty completing the task of contacting an expert on dow.com: the same “contact us” CTA on the old site brought users to different forms or from one URL to another without an easy way to return. The new experience ensures an easy, contained, streamlined, and uniform way for buyers to reach out, with strategically written and placed CTAs.
Results
INCREASING THE FLOW OF VISITORS + LEADS DuPont Water Solutions’ new website is not only set up for future success, its already driving it: establishing the business as the world’s strategic water-use thought leader and innovator in specialty-separation and clean-water technologies, while driving prospects and customers to visit – and revisit the site. +94% ORGANIC TRAFFIC +53% RETURN VISITS +139% AVERAGE MONTHLY SQLs
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